DZ-90: Setups & Payoffs in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE — Transcript

And it does all of that with fucking butt plug action sequences and hot dog fingers.

Alright before we begin. This episode is sponsored by script up, expert story and script consultants. Script up our filmmakers and listeners of the podcast. They offer excellent service giving you a report and most importantly, a zoom call to discuss your script.

So obviously, if you want more, draft zero more often become a patron. But in the meantime, thank script up. And if you want to use their services, use promo code. DZ 10. Hi, I'm Chas Fisher and welcome to Draft Zero, a podcast where two Australian filmmakers try to work out what makes great screenplays work.

And I'm Stu Willis. And on this episode we're doing a one shot. We are looking at the breakout hit of anything anywhere at the same time.

You deliberately got that title really wrong, right? Alright, just for clarity's sake, it's Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Mhm. Maybe in your universe. Jokes aside, stupid bit that I actually had planned. It's a film about Multiverses.

Yeah. First of all, I think you and I are nearly everyone we know has loved this film, and we strongly encourage any of our listeners who hasn't seen it yet to go and see it. But be warned, the way that I have phrased it to my parents is it's my favourite film of the year but also features someone being beaten to death with dildos as well as an extended butt plug fight sequence. So that's to give, I guess, an indication of tone to the kind of movie that we're talking about today.

It's absurdist.

Yes, as well as almost like commedia dell'arte like that challenging, provocative, transgressive, scatological humour throughout it. But The miracle of this movie to me is that as much as it's a crazy film about Multiverses, it ultimately boils down to an incredibly moving family drama between the lead Evelyn, played by Michelle Yeoh, her husband Waymond. Their daughter Joy. Her father, which in the subtitles is Gong Gong. But I think it's pronounced differently then the way that it's written in English and an IRS tax auditor by the name of Deirdre.

Played by Jamie Lee Curtis.

Yeah, and we both had seen the film. We both wanted to do a one shot on it because it's amazing. But Stu, you were the one who said, I think the lens that we need to analyse this film through is how well it does setups and payoffs.

And I think the reason that this film is a good example of it is that payoffs reward the audience for paying attention right there, tracking heats of information. And there's a film as chaotic as Everything Everywhere All At Once. And when we try to do a plot summary, if you haven't seen it, you'll understand. But you're tracking characters. You're tracking props. You're tracking like lines of dialogue, behaviour, plot rules of the world, all this stuff. And if you can find a way to pay it off, that's kind of a hard thing to explain what a payoff is. But the audience feels rewarded for paying attention, or they're kind of surprised at how clever you were right. They either go. Ah, yeah, I saw that coming on. My smart or oh, I didn't see that coming. That's great. And it kind of releases this emotional charge, right, and I think that's one of the good reasons for the audience. But the other thing it does, and I think again this film is a great example of it is it helps stitch the film together and make it feel integrated. Does that make sense? It's like because you've got to set off. Then you pay off later rather than it being episodic. It feels more of a cohesive whole.

Yeah. I mean, it's only I've only watched it twice the first time in theatres and the other time last night at home. And it's only on the second Watch that I've even got the Vegas inkling as to the sheer amount of visual systems that are playing throughout the film like I didn't realise. Somewhat stupidly, the whole film revolves around a MacGuffin of a giant black bagel, which has everything in it all at once. And there are so many black circles in the film, right from the very beginning that I only started to notice this time around. In the very first scene, when Evelyn is doing taxes, she's drawing a black circle. The film, in fact, opens on a circular mirror shot. The IRS auditor draws a black circle around an item when she holds it up. So before the cult members have even appeared anyway, I'm just giving that as a completely out of context example as to how much set up. That is in this movie that makes not just the payoffs feel satisfying, but also when this movie, as you say, it's very chaotic and pulls the rug out from under you, not only does it do that, but when it does surprise you, it still feels seamlessly part of a cohesive whole. And I say that about a movie that starts out and we'll talk through the structure now so I can sort of Orient people in the our discussion and our analysis. But it starts out feeling very much just like a character drama about Chinese immigrant family in the US that is having a tax audit and is struggling and all their inter familial relationships. And it hangs in that sequence before anything insane happens for 13 minutes anyway, So far, this opening has been as chaotic as the movie. But I just want to ask you something. What do you think about when this movie kind of drops you and you're really surprised by something and then explains it after the fact? Do you phrase that in within the idea of the paradigm of a set up in a payoff.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's different types of setups and payoffs, right? I mean, we're talking about a corner response or an A and B. I'm, you know, a closing of an information gap. I guess I just blanked on the author's name Will done in one of his books, possibly the dramatic workbook. He does a lot of writing exercises for playwrights and screenplays, great books. He talks about pointers and planters, right? And they're the two types. So if you have a thunderstorm in a horror movie, it's kind of basically a pointer that things are going to go wrong. What other people call foreshadowing right that we were aware and we're conscious of the setup, Okay, and then we're waiting for it to go off. It's the bomb under the table, so it actually creates suspension tension, right? The other one is a plant, which is something that we only understand in hindsight. So that could be I mean, the example that Will Done users is like someone getting bitten by an animal and waking up, and then we later discovered that he turns into a werewolf. But I think there are other examples, like the butt plug, which, if you haven't seen the film, there's basically the tax auditor. Jamie Lee Curtis's character has received a bunch of awards for her service to the I. R s and you look at them and you're like They look like butt plugs right and you just think it's like a visual gag and then later it turns into a whole thing. But there are other better examples, but the idea is that a plant is something that the meaning of it only becomes clear when it's had the payoff. And it's kind of like a moment of surprise. A joyful surprise, as opposed to This is kind of like a a foreshadowing thing, crying and genre called it, foreshadowing back shadowing. There's another way to think about it, which in some ways it's probably as much as we like. I like pointers and planters because pointers is like we're pointing forward and plant. Or is this something we planted this early so we can pay it off later and it doesn't come out of nowhere, Okay? And we talked about that with Ocean's 11 in the previous episode, Yeah.

Now one of the other ways you could frame pointers and planters, which I also I prefer it to foreshadowing and back shadowing is deliberately designed to pose a question to the audience, and one is not.

Yeah, but also shifts your mind like there's that moment of joy supply. Yeah, one focuses your attention, and you deliberately meant to be aware of it. And the other one, You're not aware of it and you want to have a moment. But I think that maybe is the third kind, which is alluded to with the visual systems. Is just making stuff feel like it's a plant. But it's not a plant in terms of like, we want you to be like, Oh, I'm understanding where this has come from, right? It's a plant. It's actually more like it's the needle has gone into the fabric and were now pulling it like it's part of the stitching. If that makes sense, I have no idea what you would call a point to point or plant and a stitch. It should probably start with people come up with it. That's going to be our challenge for this episode to see if we can come up with the P word to go with pointers and plants.

Now I think a lot of the times when this movie surprises you and lurches you and pulls the rug out from under you that often Those might be the third category of setups, payoffs and reversals.

Our reversals.

But what this film does so well is often it's using those reversals, too. Raise a question rather than set something up. It's just asking you to lean forward. It's surprising you. It's good for pacing, and it's only later in the film that you realise it was. In fact, they set up for something else. Not only did it serve a purpose in its moment of surprising the audience and making them ask questions, and I guess the example, we'll come back to it. But some of my favourite moments in this film one of them is hot dog fingers. Evelyn at some point accidentally stumbles into an alternate universe where human evolution went down a different track and everyone has hot dogs for fingers. And when that first happens, it's such a surprise that the characters in the film have to explain it to themselves, how it has happened, and thus the audience is going What the hell has just happened Why is this happening? And then it has to immediately explain what has happened. So to me, like the setup has almost come after the payoff. So part of this discussion in this episode will be an analysis of do you lead with the setup and then the payoff? Or do you pay something off and then set it up? Or I guess, explain it later anyway.

Yeah, maybe we should actually try to talk through the structure of the film, both giving people a macro version. I mean, if you're still listening and you haven't watched this film yet, it could be said to be very confusing, like some kind of a broad overview of what the film is. Mango through your structural analysis. The big picture film, I guess.

Mhm.

How would you? As a big picture, the less you know about this film going in the better, right?

Yeah, but we're going to spoil the hell out of it.

So this is the I guess it's almost a log line like it feels somewhat like a log line. But from a marketing angle, I mean, I think it must be the A24 official one, because it's an IMDb and on Letterboxd. Actually, the tagline is, universe is so much bigger than you realise. So this this would be more of a long line and ageing Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure where she alone can say what's important to her by connecting with the lives she could have led in other universes. That's actually pretty good, because a key part of it is the possibility. She runs a laundromat with her husband, and they're clearly not happy about their lives. Right, and part of it is her. The other lives of the other universes is the other possibilities. And there's a line in the film specifically about you know, of all the Evelyns you've led the most, which I don't think it's true, like all your failures have led to this point.

That's kind of the overall structure. So there's basically 15 minutes of setting up the status quo that she's in. Chinese American immigrant, Her family run a laundromat. They lived by the Laundromat. They're being ordered by the I. R. S, and there's just a lot of paper receipts. Her husband is unhappy, and she seems to be willfully ignorant of her unhappiness. Her father's come over from China, and he's very controlling. And he's disappointed in his daughter, etcetera, etcetera. It's all that 15 minutes and then basically we get this sense of the other lives that she could have lived and then by the inciting incident in the first act will begin to experience that.

I don't know how much a film this crazy adheres to three act structure or five act structure, but there's definitely sequences in there. So there's that opening sequence, which is just establishing, I guess, quite unquote the normal world of these characters that culminates with the first appearance, or it's actually the second appearance. But the first time Evelyn becomes aware of what becomes known as Alpha Waymond, possessing her husband and explaining to her the existence of the multiverse. And then the next sequence is to me the tax audit that culminates in Waymond, beating the hell out of some security guards with a Fanny pack, which is just an amazing fight sequence. And then the sequence after that is Evelyn having to learn how to what's called verse jump in her ability to defeat an alternate reality possessed Deirdre, who's attacking her.

Oh, yes. Sorry. The I. R s agent.

Yeah, the next sequence after that is actually leading up to her, learning that the evil that is affecting the entire multiverse and potentially going to destroy everything is in fact a version of her own daughter from the Alpha universe. And it kind of culminates in that confrontation, and to me, the midpoint of the film because I don't quite know, like I can clearly point to where the inciting incident is where Evelyn moves into this whole new world. But then it's almost like from there until the mid point. It's almost like a series of set pieces staged around three epic fights, like the first one between Waymond and the Security Guards, the second one between Evelyn and Deirdre and the third one, Joy, demonstrating her powers by hilariously altering reality to dismantle these security guards and confront Evelyn.

Yeah. I mean, that's all to me. The fun and games, right if we just want to talk about setup and payoff exists in a larger structural thing, right?

Yeah.

Like, hopefully we'll get to talk about the ending of this film is not the ending of the film. The payoff for the reason you've been watching it, right? Like, fundamentally, you will come to the end of film and like, Why have I been watching that?

Yes.

People don't feel like the payoff is with while they're exceedingly disappointed, whether it's television or cinema, right and rules of the world, when you introduce a concept of like this is the concept, you have a sequence of fun and games because when they first jump, it's not that they go into the alternate realities. They learn the skills, the life skills and get some of the memories of their alternates, their versions of themselves, right. So this is literally the most one of the first thing she does is kung fu conflict right, and it's definitely a matrix reference. But Matrix does the same thing, right? They introduced the rules of the world, and then the beginning of the second act is the fun and games of playing around with the rules of those world right? And that's kind of like a super hero in the fight, like a five act superhero structure. If you want to go down that film creed, cult way of understanding five acts, that's kind of the Iron Man moment to where he's building the suit and playing around with being Iron Man.

The reason why I phrased it around those three fights and look the first fight. Evelyn is cowering behind a partition. Watching the second fight is when she must, like, learn how to verse jump and defeat the Deirdre villain, right? So there's definitely an element of change and engagement, and it's possibly between those two fights that a quote unquote first act shift has happened. Should there be one? But the reason why I've got the midpoint after the confrontation with joy is because there's an actual change in the mission. Up until then, the mission has been kind of Waymond's mission to teach Evelyn to find the Evelyn that has failed the most at life and by failing at the most life. She's got the alternates of herself closest at hand, which I found like this to be such an amazing rule of the world that was so readily understood and so easily visualise when they did those multiverse maps. So what makes this Evelyn special, as opposed to every other Evelyn is because she is so continually failed at everything she has all these different potential alternates of her life so close to her on this multi dimensional map anyway. We'll get back to that in a second, but the mid point is her saying, You never told me that this great evil was Joy. I'm not going to kill my own daughter. I'm going to become like her so that I can save her, and it's almost exactly an hour into the two hour and 15 minute movie.

Okay, that's interesting. I see the midpoint. And look, maybe they're both a mid point because I think it's better off to think of mid points as a sequence as opposed to a singular moment. Sometimes they are a singular moment, right? The blowing up Alderaan in in New Hope is a singular midpoint. Okay, and the chest burster. We've done a whole episode of mid point. If you haven't listened to, it's a very old one. It's a great episode. But I think part of the main point is the grandfather being so intent on killing joy, right? The grandfather, the Alpha Waymond is prepared to kill Evelyn because she is not prepared to kill Joy, and she decides that she is going to save Joy. So there is a change in mission, as you said, which is a classic point thing. I just think it takes a few things to move into place for there to be a reversal, right?

Yeah, she needs the first reversal is her learning that Joy is the version of Joy. Is this great evil that gets revealed to the audience almost immediately, but only to Evelyn close to the middle mid point of the film. And then, you know, they have a family scene, and the father demands that she killed Joy and she goes, and there's a moment where she thinks about it. She is holding a knife right in front of her daughter, and she chooses not to. Yeah.

Yeah. So they have them tied up her current daughter, and they're like, you need to kill this Joy to stop her getting about more powerful. And then she actually comes equals a gun on her. And she actually says.

Then to me the next. It's obviously a series of set pieces, but to me the next big sequence is then, basically Evelyn, trying to verse jump as many times as she can to break her own psyche and become as all powerful and omni present as Joy has become alpha Joy anyway. And that sequence, to me ends with a trick like a filmmaker's trick that I actually in the cinema. In the first time I saw it, I bought where Evelyn's mind does break and she vomits and dies and it cuts to the end Credit.

Yeah, that was great. I'm looking at doing like what just happened. I'm just laughing because I know that's exactly like they have committed to the bit, right? It's the false out death. And they're like, uh and it's long enough that you're like, Hang on.

Yeah.

Hey, hang on. Like it's like, over an hour into the film. So you've begun to, you know, you probably you know where old men. So we've already had probably had a toilet break at this point.

Yeah, yeah, I managed to make it through Jurassic World Dominion without peeing which is like the first time in a long time that I've had to run out of the theatre halfway through a movie.

Wow. Okay, this we're going to have to talk about that film.

Anyway. So, like you say, it's a false sequence. It cuts to her in one of the alternate realities, and she's watching a movie of everything that's happened. And the next sequence is actually Joy trying to get her mother to reach Joy's. Level of, I guess, awareness. But also cynicism isn't the right word, but basically, Joy wants to get her mother to the same point that she is, which is basically on the brink of suicide because nothing matters. And she does. She brings her mother to that point, and they're about to both kill themselves. When there's a sequence of Evelyn rediscovering that there is something that matters to her as an individual, even as these all powerful, timeless beings there is something that matters to her. And then the final sequence, which is quite extended, is her trying to convince Joy that something matters.

Yeah, because the kind of Joy's thing is, if everything has happened, then nothing matters is kind of the secular logic.

There's even a final sequence, even after that, which is just like the resolution in the epilogue and things like that. That's you know, I guess the feel good happy send off after that climax. But those to me is broadly the cycles and sequences of the film.

And look you can already beginning to see how they do is set up. They do a reversal in the middle, right? There's a setup, and the set up is that there's some evil villain. The reversal is, Oh, the evil villain is your daughter, right? And then the payoff is going to be the ending, right? So thinking of setup, reversals and payoffs is true in a macro, as well as in the kind of micro stitching stuff that we're gonna be talking about.

Yeah, and like after Evelyn becomes as all powerful as Joy, she and Joy fight. And then the reversal is like Evelyn not understanding like Joy, just like sits her down. And Evelyn actually has to ask her, Why are we doing this if not to fight? And Joy says, I didn't want to fight you. I don't want to destroy you. I've been looking for you so that someone else can understand me and come on this journey with me basically been lonely and looking for someone to join her in her loneliness. And so that's a reversal. And then Evelyn does, and they were both about to die. And then there's another reversal, and we'll probably talk about the ending more in particular as to how it's like such a sublime bit of pay off. But as much as we have now been talking for quite some time, I think the three things I. Would really like to analyse how well this film does setups and payoffs is all the information that it manages to deliver in those opening 13 minutes. As one thing, I want to do how it uses setups and payoffs to explain the rules of the world from the first appearance of Alpha Woman, to that confrontation with that first confrontation of Joy, where Evelyn kind of learns she's learned how to All the rules of the world are kind of already established by that point, the second half of the movie kind of, moves on without the need for any exposition scenes. I think there's three scenes where Evelyn demands that women explain more. And then, I mean, there's the ending. But then there's two other sort of mini sequences in there. We don't have to do all of them, but Raccacoonie is one that I want to do. What I can only call the rock scenes, and people have seen the film will know what I'm talking about, and people haven't seen the films. We will explain it when if and when we get the rock scene, we can possibly discuss as our discussion of the ending because the beats that it goes through, a kind of like the dramatised beats that the ending as a whole sequence makes its way through.

Yeah, it's almost like a key scene. How's that for a plant payoff? 84 episodes later. Yeah.

Mm Uh, what does the opening set up? I've just got a series of bullet points and the reason why I went into this movie knowing that it was about multiverse travelling crazy fights, and that was about all that I knew. So to me, seeing this opening, it felt long to me in that opening watch because of what I was expecting to happen on the subsequent rewatch. I was like, Oh my God, it's only 13 minutes long. How on earth did they cram so much set up into this? So you've got the very obvious things. It's set in the Laundromat, so it's setting up the Laundromat as a location and as a business. But it also is what becomes the key choice in relation to Evelyn's decision to leave her father leave China and move to the US with Waymond to open up that laundromat. It set up, sets up the tax audit because it opens with Evelyn trying to sort through receipts. It sets up with the first interaction with Waymond. That kind of happiness has left their relationship, and that Waymond wants a divorce like he's got the divorce paperwork.

But I think it's it's interesting because what they've done a beautiful job of is like in the opening. He's very tender with her.

Mm and attentive and caring.

And so when you, for me, when he presented with divorce, I didn't know what the letter was until they play it as a reveal, which is, I guess, a payoff to a plant or somebody like Oh, that's why he needs to look at this thing. But it actually makes you go. It's kind of reluctantly wanting a divorce right, which is important because it's an important, as you say, it's setting up his character, right?

It sets up very early on Evelyn's relationship with their daughter, Joy, and how that's a fraught relationship. Joy is played, and cast kind of in her early twenties seems like to be broadly unemployed, aimless. There's sort of discussions about that later on, but also that the daughter is gay and that Evelyn has kind of accepted that but is hiding it from her father. And one of the key scenes that they have in there is Joy tries to come out to her grandfather, by introducing her girlfriend, Becky, and her Chinese is not good enough to find the word girlfriend, and Evelyn jumps in and kind of shuts down. Joy is coming out to her, her grandfather. Part of what that also introduces, is like the culture, how all these characters flit in and out of Chinese and English, the language that comes with that. There's bits of cultural racism, particularly around Evelyn's descriptions of the Jenny Slate character. Part of that is also showing how Evelyn theoretically expresses or doesn't express her love. Like Evelyn says something mean to Becky. And Becky says to Joy. You told me that's how your mother shows that she cares she says mean things about you, which comes to pay off later. They set up that there's going to be a big Chinese New Year's party in the Laundromat that night.

Is it New Year? Is it the father's birthday?

Possibly both. But it's definitely a Chinese New Year party because Evelyn later gives a Happy New Year speech. They're all wearing red. There's an Indian movie playing in the background of the Laundromat. One amazing thing that they also set up is that Waymond likes putting googly eyes on things to as a sort of light hearted joke. He's also got a line like you put some of the clothes upstairs and he says the clothes are happier upstairs, which is a delightful character beat. And as they drive to the IRS that someone is spinning a pizza sign that is a huge amount of information to get through in 13 minutes as efficiently as it does.

And make it not feel like, Oh, we're seeing a set up and we're seeing a set up and we're seeing a set up.

So I mean, look, the urgency of the audit gives it that the energy of how it's shot, I think, even if the movie didn't turn into a batshit crazy multiverse movie, that, opening and how efficient it is with conveying backstory and information and setting up character is quite a bit of a master class.

Even having that flash moment with, like, the It's a girl and the father looking disappointed, right? Like that sets up a lot of Well, I mean, it's kind of like a payoff to what we've already seen. It clarifies the relationship we've already seen.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So do you have any, payoffs that happen later in the movie that you'd like us to try and look at all the planters and pointers and basically looking into the setup that leads to those payoffs? I've got basically the rules of how the multiverse works, Like how this film works, Raccacoonie and then the series of endings in the film, focusing particularly on the rock scenes.

I mean, I wanted to kind of write down a little bit more of the ending, so that's what we could do.

In terms of like, What's the perfect way to look up, set up some payoffs. How they choose to explain to people how the multiverse works is really good rock. Ukraine is just one of a number of different multiverse running gags.

Yeah, there's like a throwaway gag that becomes not throw away, right? And we've already talked about the Dildo Awards and then because what is an interesting setup is that there's references in those for 15 minutes to all the things that Evelyn could have been doing or has tried to do. And they do it through the tax audits. Karaoke? Oh, yes, everyone's a wonderful singer. She's not a novelist, karaoke and chef. They actually set up the things that she is doing in the other universes were clearly important. Is Evelyn that were other paths that her life could have followed, and then the raccoon to me. Is there a set up to them just introducing it, or is it literally? There's a throwaway gag to her, realising that when she's a chef, the other is a techno. Is it teppanyaki? This is my terrible.

I mean, look, while we're talking about raccoon genius, should we talk about the beats? And we can use that as an example. So it's just before Evelyn is forced to choose whether to kill Joy or not. She's got Joy taped to a chair woman sitting down. Her father's behind her there, in a desk at the I. R S office in a head office. Like a really nice C suite. It's got a sex dungeon hidden behind a bookshelf. You know, there's nice furniture in there. They've just escaped from that first interaction with Joy as the supervillain, the Joy of this universe has returned. The supervillain is left to go chasing Alpha Waymond in his universe. So they're in that scene. And what Evelyn is trying to do is explain to her Joy and her Waymond how verse jumping in the multiverse is even working right.

And they laugh at her. They lose their ship. Evelyn, because they've already seated before Evelyn's, like as as an immigrant, how she functions in English. She doesn't necessarily. They've set up that the I. R S agent wants her to have a translator. They've set up that she doesn't do genders. Well, she linguistically mis genders. Becky. It's just a throwaway gag that it's actually this lovely moment where the family is sort of coming together right there just laughing at their mother, thinking that Ratatouille is Raccacoonie. And then in the sequence following this one, when Evelyn is trying to break her own mind by jumping to as many multiverses as she can and just taking on all these different memories and experiences of people until she cracks and becomes, kind of this diffuse, all powerful being, one of the verses she jumps into is one where she's like a super high skilled chef. Is it teppanyaki?

That's what I asked.

I don't know, but basically lots of blade work.

Because that's that's already set up because we've already set up. That is, that happens before the mid point, Isn't it that she's a chef?

It's the fight right after that, when she's fighting the Jenny Slate character that she jumps into that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. To get the knives. Yeah, the knife skills. Okay. Yeah.

So to put this in the context of the movie, Raccacoonie is treated as a throwaway joke near the midpoint and then to fight scenes. Later is the first time that Evelyn goes into the chef universe, and at first she's in competition in the same restaurant with a male chef who's better than her, and it looks like she's going to lose her job. And in that scene, I only noticed on the secondary watch that there's a raccoon tail out hanging out the back of the male chef's hat. I didn't notice it on first watch, but for those who are astute, you would already notice Oh my God, they haven't just used raccoon as a joke. Raccoon is a real multiverse in this film. The next scene, or the next reference to it was Alpha Waymond dies in his universe, and he, has a tearful goodbye with Evelyn, and suddenly her Waymond comes back and, he says, was I raccoon Waymond again in the next sequence of the film. Basically, it's the same story as once she's died quote unquote died and is being confronted with Joy. But basically just the story just keeps into cutting between all these many multiverses that we've been exposed to, and the fact that it feels like a seamless single story is testament to its vision systems. It's editing and just how well it sets up all these different worlds. But she discovers the raccoon and the raccoon threatens to kill her. Then, once Evelyn has agreed that nothing matters and you start seeing her in all these different multiverses that it's shown us destroying the lives of the people around her because she doesn't care because nothing matters. She hurts Waymond. She hurts her father. She just destroys everything. But it even has a raccoon, the scene where she Dobbs in.

She actually pulls the hat off in the middle of the restaurant everyone's like.

And that leads to Raccacoonie being driven off in an animal control vehicle. And it's only when in the final sequence we're going to come back to this. When Evelyn has learned to fight the way that Waymond fights, she learns to fight with kindness, and she's making a way up these stairs to try and stop her daughter from going into the bagel. That this sounds just so absurd as I'm saying it, that she has to fight everyone that she's met throughout the film, and fight them with kindness, that she meets the Raccacoonie chef, and helps him rescue the raccoon by at first climbing on his shoulders and making him run, using his hair and then when he collapses with exhaustion herself, getting up under him and letting him drive her with her hair. Hopefully, what that has just shown is that something that is just a throwaway joke, then demonstrates all the beats, and they do this and all the different multiverses. This is just one particular one, because what was so impressed me about it is unlike some of the other multiverses where you're thrown into that universe first, and it comes as a surprise. And then they explain it later. Like the hot dog fingers. This one was a throwaway joke that you just never thought would come back.

Well, because it was a misdirect. The fact that it being a throwaway joke means it doesn't feel like foreshadowing, right? Same as the but place. Right, Because you laugh of it in the moment. So it's not like all pay attention to this. This is set up.

Yeah, And look, it's possibly out stays. It's welcome. I mean, they didn't need to lean into Raccacoonie as much as they did, but hopefully what I've shown is that, when that happens, not only is it when it first happens, you don't even notice that you're in Raccacoonie world, right? Unless you're really paying attention. Then in the second beat, you're like, Oh my God, you're in. We're in Raccacoonie World. But because they've set it up as a joke, that doesn't feel absurd or it feels appropriately absurd. You're not thrown out of the movie by the fact that you are in Raccacoonie. And then after that they use the beats of Raccacoonie to track. And they do this in all the different storylines, all the different, with all the different relationships with all the different multiverses. They track the relationships and the character development through those worlds. I mean, they've done this with every single world that they go into where it's not just the one world. It's not just about the skills that they pick up, like when she goes into the singing world to pick up lung capacity, it's actually about her relationship with her father. When she goes into the martial arts world to become a super kung fu artist, it is actually about her reconnecting with Waymond. What would life have been like without Waymond and the fact that God, I was watching it last night with my wife and sister. And when she first verse jumps, she gets that first martial arts world. She comes back and she has this line to Waymond like you should have seen my life if I had never gone with you. It was so amazing. And both my wife and sister went, Oh, God, that is the most horrible thing you could ever say to someone. But it is in that storyline in that multiverse where she actually falls back in love with Waymond.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's deliberately quoting Wong Kar-wai, you know, it's really leaning heavily into In the Mood for Love.

Oh, my God. So good.

It is really good, and it's that whole, you know, maybe in another life we would have been happy doing laundry and taxes with you, but I think it works in that moment. What's beautiful about it? It's so hurtful for her, but she still has a connection with him. Like she's telling the person that she loves in this world about this thing that she's seen, that she thinks it's awesome. It just happens to be a world without him. It kind of does this nice little double Judy that she still has a connection to Waymond, that it's kind of something has happened in her life to have lost it. But I don't think it's important. So it ends up being kind of like a weekly, its own set up.

Yeah. So raccoon is hopefully just one example of how they use these worlds. Not just do set up some payoffs in a seamless way, but then use them to track the relationships.

I mean, you know, the hot dog fingers just evolves from this stupid gag about like, Oh, there's this universe where we didn't actually have fingers. We had sausages for fingers, right? And it ended up being this dumb gag, and then they add this other element of like, Oh, she's actually in a relationship with the I. R. S. agent Deirdre like a romantic relationship. But they do that when they inter cut that with her in kind of. I mean, it's going to call it the prime universe. The story that the universe that we're following is different from the alpha, in the price they inter cut that with the prime universe to see her being kind to Children, not just seeing her as the evil I. R. S. lady, but kind of seeing the humanity in her. So it does serve a purpose there, and then they do another pay off with that, which is like, Oh, you know, if you've got sausages for fingers, you actually have to learn how to be really good with your feet, right? And it ends up being this nice like, escalating gag of all the people with sausage fingers doing stuff with her feet, like playing the piano. And then she ends up using her feet in the martial arts, right.

Just one of the things that I noticed in this rewatch is hot Dog fingers is absurd in and of itself. It is an absurdist gag that they then have to explain immediately after it happens. How is this another universe in this multiverse? Right? And immediately they've got, like, the tech dude in the chair explaining She's off the map, she's on another branch of human evolution. And then they've got that wonderful 2001 image with the hot dog fingered apes winning over the other apes. Just to explain that, as absurd as this surprise was, and it is a joke, right, because it's actually showing Evelyn gets to their universe jumping poorly. She doesn't go to the universe that she wanted to go to. She ends up going to this absurd other universe. But one of the things that I noticed was, and this will connect us to the verse jumping rules. But basically the ability to verse jump. You have to do something that is so completely random and outside of your normal instincts or life that it connects you. It kind of throws you out of connection with the universe you're in and possibly connects you with another one. And before Evelyn does it the first time they show a woman doing it three times, right? They show him eating the chapstick. They show him pulling some used chewing gum off the underside of the desk and eating it. And they also showing him trying to give himself four paper cuts in between his fingers.

That's the first one he's talked. You get a little bit more exposition around the paper cut thing because he's, you know, basically, I need a way out of here like Operator tank operator. Very matrix, Right speaking to the operator. We need a way out of here, Tank putting bring.

Yeah. Mhm. Mhm, Mhm. Mhm. Yeah.

It's that kind of beat, right? So there's two to establish the pattern. Then the third disrupts the pattern. But in this case, the third explains the pattern.

Yeah. And the reason why I brought it up is the very first random thing. That's not the first is the second. The first random thing that Evelyn has to do to verse jump. The first time is follow a series of instructions. Put your shoes on the wrong way around, pretend you're in the janitor's closet and you will verse jump. And that's how she first connects with Waymond.

That's actually rule of four, because, yeah, because we're getting no context for the first time that happens.

Yeah, the second time she first jumps, is in the middle of a fight scene with Deirdre. And the thing that she has to do is say to Deirdre, I love you and mean it. So a woman who she hates a woman who is auditing her, a woman whom she's already punched and in this one is possessed by the sort of Black Circle cult member and is trying to literally kill her. She has to say, I love you to her. And because of that, the fact that when we get to hot dog fingers, the fact that they are in a relationship together and it's again the beats and the hot dog relationship our Deirdre trying to flirt with Evelyn and Evelyn being grossed out by the fingers and rejecting her in the same way that, you know Waymond reaches out to her and she rejects her. Then they break up after Evelyn realises that nothing matters. And then when she learns kindness, she reaches out with her foot to stroke the Deirdre's face after. So again, these beats these absurdist beats and these other stories are mirroring all of them. That journey that Evelyn is going on.

Yeah, and I mean, Evelyn actually says I love you to her later, doesn't she?

You are lovable or something like that. You are worthy of love.

Mm, Yeah, it's so it's kind of like an interesting playing around with your idea. It's not a complete mirror, but it's in the same kind of space.

We jumped around a little bit, but I want to go back to what you just pointed out in terms of explaining how the rules of the multiverse works, because it does it in a series of sometimes you know what's going on and sometimes you have no fucking clue. And so that's these different types of setups and payoffs. Are they God pointers planters or just background things that the audience is not supposed to be aware of being the third category in either way? So the first exposure to the multiverse there's a the audience is told about it before Evelyn. There's a point where you're looking, you're still in the Laundromat secrets, and you see Waymond, doing this like parkour flipping all around the Laundromat through the CCTV, and all that's doing is just saying something weird is going on here and everyone doesn't even notice it. It's just telling the audience that something weird is going on. Get to the IRS building and Waymond is possessed by Alpha Waymond for the first time, and he sets her up with the technology to first jump. But the audience has no idea what's going on from the audience perspective. He's changed. He's put these things on her ears and he's got a phone app out and she's complaining about all these apps on his phone. He's writing down. He doesn't know that he's writing down on his on Waymond's divorce papers, the instructions that she needs to follow to verse jump for the first time. He finishes the APP thing and she has a flash of her entire life. Up until this point, the audience, I mean, there's so much set up for the future because basically, you get all these different points that you find out in the other multiverses. She took different decisions at whether she goes with Waymond or not. You know whether her father is proud of her or not putting all that to one side me as the audience on the first watch. I still have no fucking clue what's going on at that point. All it is doing these are pointers right there. They're saying we're setting up something we're not going to explain it to. You were making you lean forward and ask what is going on. She then follows these pointers. She ends up in the closet with Waymond, and there's the first exposition dump.

Again. Still, you don't really know what the rules of the world are. It's kind of like the call to action is the inciting incident. It's it's broken what's happening in the normal world.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's quite specifically that yes, the call to adventure and the refusal of the call.

We then see Waymond eat the chapstick. Why the FARC is he eating chapstick? And he learns martial arts and beats the hell out of those security guards with the Fanny Pack. The next beat of explaining these rules. So again it's showing us is doing like these classic things that we talked about with the Matrix, no less like in that cold, open sequence. But this is like 20 minutes into the movie 25. Maybe it's quite a way into the film that it's still choosing not to orient us. What's interesting here is you've got alternating beats of. What the FARC is going on, giving us a little bit of information but then throwing us back into what the FARC is going on, giving us a little more information and slowly stepping it up to the point where, the film has established enough of those rules that it can leave it all behind. He shows her the app showing her the map of the multiverse. So there's quite useful that there's a visual image of what the multiverse looks like. And then we see him. Like I said, attempting to verse jumped three times before we see it from her point of view. So we know that if you do something weird, you gain a power. So you've seen the verse jumping three times before she does it, and then you see her do that first jump for the first time, experience that other life that was so amazing and learn how to fight kung fu Beat the shit out of Deirdre. And then they're eating bagels. Her and Waymond run off and hide. He says. You need energy. I love bagels. There's no cream cheese in my universe there. Fucking seeding the bagel right in that scene. And it's the final scene of exposition where he, you know, explains there's a great evil that you have to fight. You're the one to fight it. And it has the crackpot analogy about don't stay in these parallel universes too much or your mind will leak too much.

The big evil. It's interesting because it's deliberately not telling you the name. So if you're somewhat more film literate for lack of better word, like I'm like, Oh, clearly it's going to be Joy, right? Like it becomes a set up for me. But for other people who are, maybe not, you know, don't do funding 90 episodes of a podcast about screenwriting. You know, you don't even breathe this stuff. It will feel more like it's called the Big Evil, because that's what we call things up. And they don't feel like it's a a deliberate misdirection, in which case it's more of a plant. So it's just interesting that that's a kind of set up that is ambiguous, in which purpose it is just based on the audience relationship with film itself. Do you think the filmmakers are trying to make it a plant or as a pointer, to be like, Oh, we're going to reveal the identity of the person or like they're deliberately making a mystery? Or do you think that they're in the context of the film? I'm not sure it necessarily madness. It's just kind of like.

It doesn't. But, I mean, it's interesting for us to know. I think they use both, right, So in the first scene he talks about a great evil. So they're in the janitor's closet in the next universe. Over talks about a great evil. The Deirdre from that universe, the cult member comes in and kills Joy with a lead pipe.

Yeah, and she's got like the like the zero is actually on her forehead. So we've got this kind of like, as you said, this visual system around the the donor of evil.

Yes, but you meet Jobu Tupaki in that sequence because you see the aftermath of Joy's death Jobu Tupaki comes in out. They very deliberately covered her face, so you don't see that it's Joy at that point.

Mm. That's true. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I definitely was like, Oh, the reason you're not Show me her face is because it's going to be Joy. And you want to make it to reveal, But I'm curious to how other people felt at that.

But then, within that very sequence, she says, this isn't the Evelyn we're looking for. But she's close and does that amazing scene where Jobu Tupaki clicks her head to the right and left and moves into the different universes to the right and to the left, and she ends up in Joy and we see that she's in Joy. So it reveals to the audience quite clearly that Jobu Tupaki, is at least possessing Joy, if not, is Joy from the alpha universe. And I think when Waymond is explaining, at what point do you see her mind melting the creation of Jobu Tupaki like To me, that was still before Evelyn Learned said, Like, You know, we pushed one of them too far, and I think the audience gets to see that it's Joy either way, I think that the filmmakers are being very clear to the audience. There's a lot of pointers. Oh, this is Joy. This is Joy. This is Joy, whether it gets super over or not, before Evelyn ever finds out.

Yeah, and sometimes they're like, even though we know that the court is going to be resolved, right, we know we're going to get ensuring her face, playing the discord really loud, and holding on to it and you're going to resolve it is fun, right? There is just an element of fun. We know it's pointing at it, being Joy, but waiting until that payoff happens means that we kind of get this delayed satisfaction.

Definitely and look. And that reveal moment is sublime because it's the first time we get to see Joy's powers. Joy shows up to confront Evelyn, and there are security guards there, and she makes one security guards, head explode into confetti, which then, is a set up for later when Evelyn and Joy turned into pinatas in their fight sequence, and they're knocking confetti out of each other. So even like this thing that is supposed to be this absurdist surprise like Oh my God, look at her powers. Look at what she can do ends up being set up and seeding for a later moment when something is absurd, as these characters turning into pinatas in the middle of a fight sequence feels visually seated and appropriate already.

And I think you need the sausage fingers for that, right? I think as much as they were making. We're amused by the sausage fingers universe that whole like, Oh, she's completely gone off the map is what allows all the absolute batshit. It's a setup for all the plant. It's really a plant for all the batshit crazy stuff that happens. Or this is going to be the term that I like. You got pointers plants and underpinning. Just got the P in it for those you can't see Chas's face. His face looks like this.

I mean, just to reiterate what these mean like a pointer is one where the audience is aware of the setup is happening like Look over here. This is important.

And they're looking forward.

And it's asking a question. What's prompting the audience asking a question. A planter is something that just is there a bit later pays off.

Yeah, and forces you to look back potentially and go if you're aware of looking back and going, Oh, you know, particularly like in mysteries like Oh, that's why the suitcase was there or whatever, you know.

And then what we're talking about that this film does so well is just all these seemingly throwaway things in the moment. Later, allow some use the word stitches. And I think that's a really good analogy because it's part of the tapestry of the movie. It allows you to branch out, and it's quite often in terms of a screenwriting tool. Quite often, what I find out is like something in my script happens and it's bumping readers, and I really want it to happen. And the reason it's bumping is not the thing that I want to happen. It's because I haven't done enough pointing, planting or perhaps underpinning which this film does miraculously well.

And depending Hey, yes. And it's great that you picked up in these visual underpinnings as well. Some of them are going to be Easter eggs, right? Like maybe the pizza person spinning. The sign, which you mentioned offhandedly deliberately offhandedly in your structural breakdown, is to pay off the fact that there is a universe where Evelyn is just literally a sign spinner, right?

And uses that skill to fight and defeat people.

Yeah, so even that becomes a payoff. Because we see her before is like this is everyone at her. Possibly her worst or she is doing is being a sign spinner. And then later we see that that has value.

So should we talk about the ending.

Yeah, let's see if we can do it because, as we kind of talked about at the beginning, the ending is the payoff to having watched the whole film. What I was conscious off when watching this film, and I think it's great and it's doing a lot of chaos is basically that well window genre right, And that means it's leaning heavily into conventions. It's deliberately quoting films. It's quoting films in order to help us understand what they are. It's playing around with genre, so part of the sausage fingers things in their first introduced is through this dance. Kind of like maybe from a Bollywood masala film that we've seen earlier. And then we see a version of With Sausage Fingers, Right? So it's playing around with genre in our understanding of genre. And I think the film is using Hero's Journey template stuff very well. But it's also it's other big influence, I think is Pixar, right? Weirdly or maybe, and maybe the kind of Dan Harmon's story circle. Michael Arndt has this great video. If you haven't watched it already, writing insanely great endings, I think maybe the reason is there's other people that are summarised. He's writing about it and make it sound more code of like it's codified. But he's like, This is one way to think about stories, right? And then other people try to summarise it. They're like, This is what makes the story great. So basically, he thinks that most films the climax is around two minutes, right that really films were about the final two minutes, and in fact, there's a key 45 seconds that have got these very specific beats. So this is kind of building on. In some ways, that's a sequel. Follow up to our catharsis episode right that we've got. If you haven't listened to it, that's worth listening to where it's breaking down key beats for a kind of cathartic ending, where there's a moment of insightful and it's related to. The character has a moment of insight for self recognition, and the audience has given the capacity to reflect. This is not that kind of ending. Actually, for Michael Arndt these are the beats and I think they are present in the film, which is that there is in this final two minutes previous to this two minutes. There's kind of been a Judas moment. The greatest ally kind of portrays them by adhering to what we'll learn or we'll talk about breathing is the dominant values, right? And then there's two minute climax. There is a chemical as the moment of commitment from the hero. The hero, as part of that will listen to the mentor, and they will choose the underdog values in this story. But that will lead to failure. It will lead to external plot failure. It will lead to internal character failure and will lead to what Michael Arndt will talk about his philosophical failure. And it seems that no positive outcome is possible. And then there will be a decisive act by a character. It doesn't necessarily need to be the lead character. The example. Michael Arndt uses from Star Wars. It's Han Solo returning to the battle. Okay, so Han Solo has sided with the self interest of the Empire and then be in rebellion and left. And then, in fact, because of Luke's influence, he's come back that leads to a reversal, decisive act, I think is probably, um, Luke turning off the computer. And then that leads to a whole bunch of successes internal, external, philosophical. Been a while since I've watched the video. So it's possible to get those Star Wars beats wrong because I think the deciphering fact is turning off the computer. But the reversal is Han Solo coming back. I think they're kind of intertwined what leads to this decisive act, and it's kind of meant to be this woo and what Michael Arndt is talking about with philosophical success is related to his understanding of values. But this is going to be my summary, which is that there's external plates. This is what's going to happen to the world and journalists is what's at stake for the character. But for him, stories are about competing ways to live your life and are related to the moral or philosophical or value systems right that we're presenting. It's not just that it's good, good and bad. It's there representing different understandings of how to live your life tradition versus modernity or whatever, right. And it's here in this film, it's very much got that like, literally. Joy is representing a proposing a way of seeing how the world works and is trying to tempt Evelyn into it. And Waymond is offering another way, which is kindness. Okay, so Joy is like nothing matters. There's no reason to be nice to anyone because it's all bullshit anyway. And Waymond is competing for Evelyn's soul. He's the other voice in her world saying You should be kind to people. So there is absolutely Evelyn's kind of soul in the balance between these competing values of how you should live your life in the film. So I think the film was very consciously trying to do that.

Yes, and I think what you've identified that everything that Michael Arndt wants to happen in two minutes. This film does probably over 20 minutes what I've referred to as the rock scenes, and there's broadly three movements to the rock scenes. But basically, for those of you haven't seen it. When Evelyn learns the Joy is not trying to fight her, they're not trying to kill each other that, essentially Joy wants to recruit Evelyn. They end up in a multiverse where no human life has evolved. And so it's just an empty valley devoid of any kind of life. No vegetation, no bird.

That should be almost all the multiverses.

Yeah, well, she said she doesn't she say she's got a line in there saying This is what most of them are like.

Yeah, OK, Yeah. Probably because that would be true.

Yeah, and Joy and Evelyn are just two rocks, and they're not anthropomorphised. It is literally, for the most part, a static shot of two rocks sitting there, and the way that they're having dialogue is in subtitles over the top of the screen. So it's static. It then does move into a over the shoulder coverage, like back and forth between them, as they're having a conversation to help that feeling of a conversation, even though it's static shots of two rocks. And then there is another point where the camera circles around them as well.

All right, so you've gone through this huge kind of like super cut the film. This film is very intense, right? Visually, it's very intense. And there is this kind of, like, moment of, like jump cuts where it's like flashes of Evelyn and all these different universes. Evelyn Cartoon. Evelyn, right? It's used in the trailer, all right, and then it kind of cuts to this slowing. So it's been a super intense. This is kind of the lowest point. She's kind of being arrested, and then she falls behind a rock, right? And then we kind of go into the dissolved from that, and it's actually like a match. It's a beautiful kind of. They've done, like a match, literally dissolve into it. And so you've had all this intense music and Sam. It's a cacophony of visual and sonic cacophony, to piece this wide shot, slow editing, no dialogue, minimal sound design, and it actually has this interesting effect of drawing your attention. Like really, it's gone the opposite by being so intense. Something going super minimal, actually says this is it makes you laugh at first, but then it kind of gets it kind of allows you to get into the film. Philosophical. How could you hear joy? Where are we.

Mhm. Yeah, so in that first scene, that is kind of the scene where Evelyn becomes convinced of Joy's point of view that nothing matters now. What then happens sequentially through the film is that after Evelyn learns that nothing matters, we see her go and destroy all the different hurt people in all these different universes that we've seen. We've already talked through the raccoon E one and the Hot Dog Fingers one. We've got the singer, one where she falters in the performance. But the particularly hurtful one is she ends up kind of where we think is prime universe. There in the party, the Chinese New Year Party, she ruins the tax audit, meaning that the tax office is going to repossess the laundromat. She mouths off at her father at Joy at Waymond. She destroys everything, even takes a baseball bat that has googly eyes on it important and smashes a window and has ended up in handcuffs and is about to be arrested. Right? So all part of the sequence that everything is going to be destroyed, and so she and Joy are ready to go into the bagel, and it's then that we see somehow Waymond rescue that situation. Deirdre lets her out of the handcuffs, and she doesn't understand how it's possible.

So Joy is trying to diminish the power of Waymond's kindness, rescuing Evelyn from having shattered everything. And it's then that you go back into that beautiful one car y sequence, and it's actually the first point that I cried in the movie is, he explains to her, This is how I fight. It's not that I don't fight. You think that I don't fight? You think that I'm not strong? You think that I'm weak? But I fight with kindness and from a rock sequence that convinces Evelyn to stop Joy from going into the bagel and Joy says, Well done, you're figuring you're shit out. You want to stay here? That's fine. I'm still going. And then it becomes Evelyn learning to fight, using the kindness to rescue Joy. Now, the reason why I'm getting to all this is that what then happens is that Evelyn puts a fucking googly eye in the middle of her forehead to represent, you know, the opening of her third eye. But they've ceded the googly eyes way back in the beginning and Not only that, then the rock in the rock multiverse turns around, and Evelyn Rock has googly eyes and is like, trying to get closer to Joy Rock to give her a hug, saying, Come here and it's, beautifully funny because anyone, I mean, presumably, most people have had the experience of either their parents trying to hug them and when they were shitty, teenagers are going No, go away. Did stop trying to hug me. Or in my instance, as a parent, I now try and hug my son when he's really upset, and he's like, No, go away, Stop trying to hug me.

So I definitely think it's got the idea of competing values in this film. I think part of the reason that the ending feels overlong to me is by pulling you into multiple universes. It's actually slightly. It kind of means it's going to hit the beats like a a b b b B C C C c Right. And for some people, that can add to the emotional effect because it's so maximalist, right, which it would for you. But for me it it kind of became like a little bit distancing. But the kamikaze moment of commitment right and here are listening to the mentor are related. It is the mentor in this case. Is Waymond right? He has been the mentor since the beginning of the film. He is like, basically, Morpheus meets Trinity, right? Like he is that combination I, the Alpha Waymond. But also what's beautiful about this is also Waymond in all the universe is there's a bit of a mentor for Evelyn about how she can live a better life, right?

But she has been kamikaze. She has destroyed everything by adopting Joy's Nothing matters. Philosophical perspective.

Yeah, but I see that as low as point. This kind of moment of commitment is the Luke flying into the trench right by himself. Okay, that's this idea. So it's that moment of, like, I'm going to fight my way up the stairs, right in the hero, like I'm going to do the final stand, and then the final stem is going to have a feeling of success for a while because you want to lift people up so you can drop them in. The higher that you lift them, the further you can drop them. Right? So she has chosen the underdog values, which, in the context of this film, is kindness vs kind of despair. I think what is joy is like is offering this kind of nihilistic despair, and she has chosen it. But it actually leads to failure. Right, which is a success. But the failure is the joy still goes into the bagel, right? Or jumps off the cliff.

Yeah, I mean, from the rock scene. It's not just that she does it to me. There's an important distinction just to make. So Evelyn has battled through all the different characters of the film, using kindness to get there and is fighting with joy and says, Stop calling me Evelyn. I am your mother forces her into a hug, feels that love stops, actually physically stops joy from going into the bagel. And then Joy expresses her point of view, which is she wants the pain to stop. Let me go! And Evelyn says, Okay, Evelyn actually lets go of joy. And from the rock scene, you see the rock tumbling off the cliff.

And it's interesting because do you read that as failure, right in the moment? Look, as I said, I'm not someone who's like every ending needs to be in the Michael aren't thing right. I'm even thinking our catharsis episodes when I've revisited and I'm like Mary. Film needs to exactly hit the catharsis speech right, and that different combinations of them have kind of different feelings. Okay, and this is going for a different feeling than than blowing up the funding. Death Star right? Like that is kind of like, Yeah, Luke is accepting. Here is the chosen one like that is very different from everyone's relationship with joy. But there is this sense of failure that, like is the whole thing is that she's just got to let joy go. And so the question is, is what is the reversal and decisive act? Whether it's decisive act leads the reversal. A reversal leads to the decisive act. What is that He is it Evelyn? Actually, I mean, it's pretty decisive as a rock to jump over the side of a cliff.

I mean, to me, it's that she lets her go that she says, Okay, she fights so hard to stop her daughter. And it ends up with another amazing moment where not only is Evelyn holding onto it, but everyone is holding on to Evelyn in this chain of people to rescue Jobu Tupaki. Yeah, to me, it was just like the Sirius, like Evelyn did everything she could. And then she actually listened to her daughter and understood her and accepted her point of view.

And the daughter reaches out of the bagel and decides that she wants to be pulled back. So it's interesting now re watching it. And look, this is people who can disagree with me and write me right as hate mail. I think it's slightly for me the reason it doesn't quite work as it's slightly and you could argue it's a strength, right? But it's slightly can fuzz Aled. Right? So you've got the imagery of joy leaping off the cliff, right? So she's going to despair. You need to let it go, but you need to be there and be like I'm going to listen to you in Rock Universe, Evelyn jumps off after with her. Yeah, she watches her door to go, and then she decides to go with her right. And then Joy in Laundromat World has kind of run off right, and they're having an emotional confrontation about that. But then we Inter cut that with hot dog fingers. And yes, it is them undermining. It's kind of then trying to have a joke to break the humour, but also it's like, Well, that's about two people doing sexy times, right, like I mean you can see it. It's like on the one level, it's about the need for human connection, right?

Mhm.

But I'm also not sure what Rocket chewy being like, What's his face being thrown rocky to any other than, Ah, this is hope, right? It just feels like they're just slightly that. I guess that's it's just rocketry. And because, like, her bring her father on the stage in singing World is really kind of connected to it. And it's a powerful sequences, powerful, very one. But it's just for me. Why it feels slightly overcooked is it just feels that those two things are not connected to the philosophical idea. And and it's beyond that. I'm having trouble articulating it because I think the reason it is emotional right when it works and it hits you emotionally is it's about It's a beyond kindness and human connection, right? I think there's something deeper than that. You can disagree with him.

Yeah. Know where I fully agree with you. It is the same beat over and over again, and that is quite deliberate, right? It goes through her using kindness to fight, starting with Deirdre and then working up through a whole lot of people you don't care about, Like you learn in that moment that one of the characters has a bad back and she fixes his, bad back with chiropractic.

They do that once as the first one, and it's funny. And then we have the callback. The payoff to the plant about the this is my wife used to wear that perfume right? It's a great example of just a small and then But then there's like another person we don't really know and it's like, Yeah, okay, you only needed, like, sucking two of them.

Yeah, and so it does it again and again and again. And I agree with you that it's a repeated beat. But the reason it worked for me is because at the top of that stare, just between her Evelyn, enjoy the last person to try and stop her is her father. And her father is still representing. You've got you. Let her go. You let her die, and the whole multiverse will be saved, right? She's the evil that is affecting the whole multiverse. And she wants to kill herself. Great. Let her go. And then what? They have seeded throughout. Like every time she's verse jumped. They've shown her leaving her father or staying with her father, or what her relationship is with her father. And she says to her father, I'm not going to let her go like you let me go. And that kicked me in the feels, and I'm not sure if it would have kicked me in the feels if I hadn't seen it go a A like the same beat over and over again because it's not. Actually, she's not like making her father feel love or kindness. That sequence is actually about her, not letting her father's opinion of her affect her. And she's in the Laundromat, she says. I found someone to be kind and patient to fill that. My daughter has also found that so even, like acknowledges Becky, right and all of that, I'm not sure if I would have had the feels that I had at that moment if they hadn't just been through this series of ridiculous heightened, same beat over and over again, in terms of competing ideas. Clearly, Joy has clearly enunciated her point of view. Nothing matters. We have all of time and space. I have felt everything over and over again. Yes, you feel something good right now, but let me tell you let you in on a secret that doesn't last So joy is saying I'm ending this or she doesn't even know if she's going to die or commit suicide. She just wants to feel something new. And when Evelyn successfully pfizer and stops her, it's all about a mother hugging her. But to me, that sequence about the culminates in Evelyn letting Joy go. It's agreeing that nothing matters. But then it's What do you choose to do when nothing matters? Joy even asked her why? Out of all the universe is, Do you want to choose this boring us one where you do laundry in taxes? And to me, the competing idea is not that something matters. It's not like the opposite of nothing matters. It's not that it's not kindness. It's like you have the ability to choose. When nothing matters. You can actually choose what to live for now, Evelyn chooses kindness. But to me, Joy just chooses Evelyn life, family and again, I cried again.

And I'm usually someone who's like it shouldn't be this formula and that formula or whatever, and I'm like it wasn't clear enough. So I know I'm being a hypocrite. The air and it's trying to tap into something that I think is I've seen some people say all the film was trying to say that you should be kind to other people and I'm like No, Clearly the issue is not that, Evelyn has been not kind to joy. It's that she's lacked empathy. And in a way it's like kindness is a way of acting as a result of having empathy.

And letting her go as the ultimate empathy.

Yeah, and it's and it's not being controlling because it's also understanding people's agency. You know, I wouldn't have let my daughter go, but that's also like I can't you need to do what I think is right for you. And if you don't, then I'll never speak to you, which is kind of her relationship with her dad. And that kind of controlling act is also not acknowledging that people having empathy for people not acknowledging that people have agency have lives outside of who you are and what is interesting. So maybe I'm really appreciating it because what is interesting is ultimately experiencing multiple universes. Is that that is beginning to understand that everyone else exists within a universe, right, that is separate from you. And yes, you may be jumping to another universe. That's your universe. But all you need to do is to start looking at everyone else is kind of being in their own universe. And you begin to understand. Certainly her. Her relationship with joy is not. She loves joy, but she wants her to be in her. Evelyn wants her to be in Evelyn's world, right? As opposed to. I'm going to understand and meet you in your own terms.

And that's the last movement. That's the last thing that she learns only by letting her go. Does joy have the space to actually want to try life again?

I don't I don't think joy in universe. Second, this is going to necessarily commit suicide, but it is going to be a like a metaphorical death related to her mother. Like she'll be cutting off her. She is going away, and she is never necessarily speaking to her mother again. And he's going to live a life of despair. So.

Again Like the film is a chaotic swirl of all these different beats being represented in different ways. So we're seeing the rock go off the cliff. We are seeing joy sink into the bagel. We are seeing joy drive away from the party. Whether it is suicide or not. It is they're all visual representations of yet, I guess, despair or disconnection. Maybe that's ultimately what it's about is connection versus disconnection.

And not letting coming to like the payoff about the taxes, right? Like the taxing book ending is set up and payoff, right? Like as someone I'm late with my taxes at the moment, and I've had to put it like, But I'm in the middle of planning a house move, and I've probably got a project that's run over by a couple of weeks. I've got another project that's actually started six weeks, like there's a lot of noise in my life at the moment, right and taxes and noise. And you feel sometimes you focus so hard on dealing with the noise in life that you forget to that actually, life isn't about taxes, right? It's about connection with other list to me, you know? I mean, that's.

Yeah, and that's when Waymond says, Like in another life, I would have enjoyed doing taxes and or laundry in taxes with you. Whatever the line is, it's not that he's actually talking about enjoying laundry and taxes. He's enjoying what he would enjoy as a life connected with her.

Yeah, that actually hit me in the feels. Chas.

Yeah. I mean, hopefully what? Listeners, if anyone hasn't seen the film and has made it to the end of this podcast, that is a freaking miracle.

You can make sense of what we talked about.

But the but the point being like how this film is ultimately about what it takes to save a marriage, what it takes to not let you pass on your generational trauma onto your Children and what it takes to, help a young person in crisis reconnect with life. And it does all of that with fucking butt plug action sequences and hot dog fingers and whole swirl of different genres. Raccacoonie. And like that is the miracle of this film.

But it juggles all those things that it's It's a kung fu film. It's a sci fi film. It's kind of got a nice Pixar family related kind of element, right, like we've referenced Finding Nemo and that is not an accident, right?

Mm. Yeah. Mm hmm.

They've set it up and they've set it up so well coming back to that connection thing. The fact is, I'm just thinking about that idea that it's about her not having empathy for others. It's that controlling thing when she speaks on behalf of joy right itself. It's serving. Her purpose is itself interested. It's not seeing joy as a fully realised human outside of herself, like I'm not saying that she's kind of dehumanising with her, but she's not. She's just not empathising and acting in that position, right? And even her using the majority to one of her customers so insulting like a character sure is like I am dehumanising others right? I'm not having any connection with people who are being ignorant to her husband's emotional situation. Everyone's kind of disconnected right and she's focused on the noise of taxes and noise on the laundromat, and I think that mundanity contrasted with the absurdity is part of what makes it work right.

Yeah. I mean, I was amazed. I guess part of it might be budget reasons, but I was amazed that, actually, for a film that feels like it does span, multiverse is like the different universes felt like genuinely different universes. But really, the main sets almost the entire film is in either the Laundromat or the I. R S building.

I think the fact, this idea that there is, whether we're going to we'll settle on something, whether it ends up being underpinning of patches or stitching this idea that there is something that is deliberately not to be conscious right that you've got set up to. The point is that the audience is aware of the looking forward, which I think is something there is more to unpick there for us, about how that relates to audience experiences of films, because it's like a narrative point of view thing, right? And a plant makes audiences look back on the film like That's got some interesting stuff and kind of underpinning. I think patching kind of helps people experience the film in the present, and I think there's probably a lot of skill to do that well, and it will probably go. It's not just in the riding. There will be a version of the underpinning that works, need to works well in the writing, but and then it will need to translate into shooting and the editing gonna be like, Oh, it's just too much. I mean, that's always the stressful thing about doing stuff this mysteries are we giving away too much. Are we giving away Not enough, right? And so even doing stuff that is completely like no one's meant to notice this scaffolding, right? But it needs to be there because otherwise people would be like, Where did that come from?

I'm sure that they couldn't have done. I mean, I haven't read the script, but it would be impossible for that script to have been legible and contained all the patching that they ended up using visually. If that makes sense, there wouldn't have been a way to write in every single piece of foreshadowing or like connective tissue that's in there in a way that would have been not a novel.

Yeah, well, yeah. And as we've talked about before and it's like I think every line in a script is a close up, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I think it is. You can't write like a wide shot and give you all that kind of subtle level of detail As soon as you go. Uh, you know, we're on a it's on a farm. A beetle, a VW beetle drives up the driveway. You basically in the minds that I've gone from a farm into a close up of a beetle, right? I just I mean, maybe other people are different, but other people's minds don't exist, But I think that makes it very hard to do that kind of stuff. Yeah.

But you can do it like you can do it linguistically. You can choose words that might be slightly unusual or anachronistic in order to, kind of uses a call back later on right in the same way that we were talking with Stephen Cleary about hooks and dialogue. But the biggest thing that I've taken from this and to me, what this film and look, this is a very unique movie. There's only so much you can get away with. But the fact that it uses plot interventions like external surprises like Evelyn in that sequence that she's trying to break her own mind. She's finding random things to do. No one. She doesn't have the person in the chair saying, You must do this precise thing like there's someone in the chair telling, the people that she's fighting that they need to insert one of those trophies up there are in order to regain their fighting skills, right? That's they've been told that. But what Evelyn is doing is just doing random things to pick up random skills to spread her mind as far as possible. She doesn't have anyone telling her what to do. She's just doing strange things, like blowing up someone's nose or drinking an entire bottle of orange soda or whatever it is that presents itself at the time. And the equivalent of that that could happen in any story is so she doesn't know where she's going to end up. She doesn't know which multiverse she's going to write. The writers obviously do, and they're very clever. But she doesn't know. And so from the audience point of view, it feels like a random sort of plot happening to her right. She's just throwing herself somewhere across the multiverse, not knowing where she's going to end up. And to me, what this film is a master class in is what if you as the writer, wants something to happen to your characters, and often we have plot or external things to the characters intruding on them. When that happens in your story, you've got choices about when you want to explain what that's happened or you can sit with the uncertainty. And can you use that thing that you really want to happen? That the characters weren't expecting? That feels unusual. Can you use it to set up something in the future? Does the fact that Evelyn learns kung fu but also reconnects with her long lost love does the fact that she learns good knife skills from being a teppanyaki chef but also helps Raccacoonie be rescued? Does the fact that she ends up with hot dog fingers but then teaches a woman who feels disconnected from life that she's actually worthy of love? Can you make these things? Can you make these external things that you want to happen to your characters, be set up for something else so that that payoff feels even more incredible later? Like you said, That's just like the sublime craftsmanship of this film is how seamless it feels. Despite being a Was it a chaotic whirlwind of genre?

Yeah, and it sounds like it was even more chaotic And why you were talking. I was paying totally, totally paying attention while looking up the pdf of the script because our friends at script up, we're like, Oh, you should read the script.

Uh, yeah, yeah, as always.

And I'm sorry to say we didn't read the script, but it's also a version from 2017, and it is very different. It opens with Professor Jackie, which I think, Well, I think that's Evelyn's name.

Who is Professor Jackie, Right? Okay. Does it start in the Alphaverse with her creating Jobu Tupaki?

Yeah, yes, yes, it's heard talking about particle. Yeah, it's the world set up.

Interesting.

Just check the portal for your homework. Gary, leave Go. Okay, yeah. So it's all it's like a It's the crazy world.

Whoa.

So it's sitting up the sci fi stuff straight away, as opposed to that being a gradual reveal.

But just look at what they've done in the rewrite in terms of when they've chosen. It's not like The Matrix where in the Matrix they show all this crazy shit happening. It's a it's a pointer. It has the audience leaning forward. It's asking questions. How does this all work? And then it's back with Neo. But then there's a full on sequence, one single seated sequence of them explaining to Neo how everything works, right. It's a really great sequence, but it's there, whereas what they've done in this film is, they've taken, from minute 13 to an hour in to pass out that information rather than open with Professor Jackie explaining the rules of the world.

Yeah, exactly or how it's possible. Interestingly, this is the only observation for a last minute script observation for the universes that aren't the prime universe. They actually have the universe name before the interior exterior slug. So it's hot Dog universe apartment, living room, science. Been a universe, Interior office. And there's a couple of others, like Alphaverse, interior Truck closet. I mean, it's like, How else would you do that? I mean, I suppose you could do Interior closet Universe Janitor's closet, right? But it's that kind of like, No, actually, if you're trying to sucking schedule this thing or just try to read it and follow it, you need to explain what universe we're in, because the audience is going to pick that up super quickly in a cut right, and you can find ways to do that with colour grading. And they use, you know, haven't even. There's lots of amazing stuff to do. They use a lot of aspect ratio switches. I'm pretty sure they've done a bunch of grading tricks, possibly shot on different lenses and stocks to make all those universes feel really visually distinct. Um, you know, that's kind of like There we go. That's an observation that me not listening to you is worthwhile jazz so he could share that.

Always.

All right. I have nothing. I have nothing else to add. I thought that was a good breakdown. Thanks for all your work on this, Chas. I really enjoyed hearing your breakdown of any any anything, Any place at the same time.

Thanks as always. Like you said to You're in a limited band with space at the moment and you and I go in different cycles and phases of this. But this episode only was brought about by the fact that we have wonderful patrons who bring you more Draft Zero more often in particular. Alex Bjorn, Kazimir, Eduardo Garrett, Jennifer, Jesse, Krabi, Lee, Randy, Sandra and Thomas. Wow, this list is getting embarrassingly long. You guys are amazing.